Commander Strelkov’s Bosnian Connection

Just who is Commander Strelkov, the figurehead of the so-called Donetsk People's Republic?

Commander Strelkov. Flickr/Bruce Sterling. Some rights reserved.

Since the war in Ukraine
started, the Western media has paid relatively little attention to the leaders
of the pro-Russian paramilitary formations in Eastern Ukraine. Western
audiences have been presented with standard portraits of mercenaries,
ideological warriors, nationalists, and brute simpletons fighting to fulfill
Putin’s imperial dream. As a consequence of such reporting we had learned
little about their long military careers and their political aspirations.

The downing of the Malaysian
passenger plane over Eastern Ukraine and the linking of the pro-Russian
paramilitary leader of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic, Ivan
Vsevoldovich Girkin (a.k.a. Strelkov), to that crime has somewhat changed the
situation. Strelkov’s face suddenly appeared on the covers of major Western
newspapers. For someone like me, who specializes in the modern Balkan history, the
mentioning of Bosnia in media reports on his military background was of
particular interest. I wanted to learn more about Strelkov’s Bosnian
experiences.

Since the beginning of the conflict, this
paramilitary commander has tried to project the image of himself as a man of mystery,
and a romantic warrior - an incarnation of a medieval Christian knight - who
would defend Russia and its Eastern Orthodox values at all cost. As the days
went on, the layers of mystery surrounding him slowly peeled away, and we were
able to see the face of a warlord who mastered his bloody craft in many
theatres of war over the last few decades.

By his own admission, and in
addition to fighting in both Chechen wars and in Transnistria (Moldova, June-July,
1992), he also fought alongside the Bosnian Serbs for over five months, between
1 October 1992 and 26 March 1993. In early 1993, Strelkov published his Bosnian
Diary as a
series of articles in the far-right Russian
newspaper Zavtra.

In a recent newspaper
article in the International Business
Times on Strelkov’s days in Bosnia, this Russian paramilitary leader was
linked to the 1992 massacre of some 3000 Bosnian Muslim civilians in and around
the town of Višegrad as well as torture, rape, and murder of civilians in the
spa-resort, Vilina Vlas.[1]

Strelkov was a member of the
2nd Russian Volunteer Detachment, led by
Michail Trofymov, and fought alongside 2nd Podrinjska and 2nd
Majevićka brigades of the Army of the so-called Republic of Srpska. Based in the municipality of Višegrad, this Russian
detachment took part in some of the heaviest fighting for the control of this
town and the neighboring UN Safe Areas of Žepa, and Goražde.[2]

Eyewitnesses and those who survived torture, rape
and killings in and around Višegrad during the fall 1992 and winter 1993 confirm
that the Russian volunteers
also assisted the Višegrad-based killing squad known as the Avengers (Osvetnici). They were led by
the convicted war criminal, Milan Lukić. The unit’s most prominent members were
Sredoje Lukić, Mitar Vasiljević (both convicted of war crimes by the ICTY), Vidoje
Andrić, Momir Savić, Željko Lelek, Oliver Krsmanović, and Dragan Savić. They
tortured, raped, and murdered Muslim men and women from the municipality of Višegrad.
The available sources tell us that every tenth pre-1990 inhabitant of the
municipality of Višegrad (almost exclusively of Islamic faith) is listed as
either dead or missing.[3]

Moreover, the testimony of a
rape survivor, Mevluna Jašarević, mentioned Russian soldiers inside the room in
the Vilina Vlas spa-resort where torture and rape, and the subsequent suicide
of the famous local beauty, Jasmina Ahmetspahić, took place. The witness, a rape
victim herself, described how a Russian soldier was holding beaten-up and
bloodied Jasmina by the collar of her unbuttoned white shirt. Suddenly,
according to this witness, Jasmina spread her arms wide and took off her shirt
before jumping to her death (or salvation) through a glass window of a third
floor hotel room.[4]

Was Strelkov there? Did he know about this? How did this Bosnian
experience influence his view of Ukrainians and other non-Russians who live on
the territory claimed by Strelkov and his fellow nationalists as their
ancestral land?

Strelkov’s
participation in the Bosnian war was part of the effort by the Bosnian Serbs to
attract various paramilitary groups from Russia, Ukraine, and Greece to their
cause. The Bosnian Serbs had claimed that they were fighting for the
preservation of Eastern Orthodox faith and Slavdom in Bosnia. He was part of a contingent of some 700 Russian
volunteers who joined the Bosnian Serbs in the municipality of Višegrad in the
fall of 1992.

In his 1992 documentary Serbian Epics,
Pawel Pawlikovski showed us a conversation between the leaders of the Bosnian
Serbs, Radovan Karadzić (accused of genocide and war crimes and currently on
trial by the ICTY in The Hague) and the Russian ultra-nationalist writer Eduard
Limonov. After Limonov had fired several rounds from a 50mm machine gun aimed
at Sarajevo, testing its accuracy, Karadzić convinced him that the Bosnian
Serbs had already covered travel expenses for “several hundred” Russian
volunteers to come and join them in the fight.[5]

Out of those 700
volunteers, 37 of them had died during the fighting
in the municipality of Visegrad. On November 5, 2011, the authorities of the
para-state Republic of Srpska had unveiled the monument marking the death of
Andrei Nikolaevich Nimenko, Vasily Vikotorovich Ganievsky – Cossac, Vladymir
Sofanov, Dimitriy Popov, and other Russian volunteers who fought alongside
their forces. Those same authorities had erased the word genocide from the
gravestone in a memorial park dedicated to the Bosnian Muslim victims of the
killings in Višegrad.[6]

Strelkov’s manner of fighting and his obvious political
aspirations deserve attention as well. In many ways, his actions and attitude
resemble those of the Serbian warlord and paramilitary commander, Željko
Ražnatović Arkan. Like Arkan before him, Strelkov terrorises civilians to
achieve his military objective. Mimicking the actions of the late Serbian
warlord in Bosnia and Croatia, Strelkov defines his fight in Eastern Ukraine in
national and religious terms, and sees himself as the savior of the nation. The
sense of omnipotence that comes along with such delusions of grandeur was the
driving force behind Strelkov’s recent criticism of V. V. Putin’s attitude
towards Russians in Ukraine. It was also an attempt to legitimise his future
political aspirations. He is moulding his paramilitary unit into a loyal force
that could help him win future electoral competitions. Much like Arkan’s Tigers
and his loyal soccer hooligans, Strelkov’s paramilitaries could turn on a dime
and become superb political operatives of tomorrow. Arkan ended up as a Serbian
MP representing the province of Kosovo, while Strelkov sees himself as a
decision maker in Eastern Ukraine and its future political representative in
the Russian Duma. It remains to be seen if Strelkov, like Arkan before him, would
end his days in a pool of blood on the marble floor of some luxury Moscow
hotel.

Whatever the endgame in Ukraine might be, the
international bodies such as the tribunal in The Hague, for example, would be
well advised to re-examine some of their old files on Bosnia and re-evaluate the
role Russian volunteers, including Strelkov, played in that bloodbath.

Dr. Srdja Pavlovic
teaches modern European and Balkan history at the University of Alberta. He is
the Research Associate of the Wirth
Institute for Austrian and Central European Studies (U of A) and the author
of Balkan Anschluss (Purdue Univ.
Press, 2008). His upcoming book is entitled It
Could Have Been Spring: Case Studies of Active Citizenship and Direct
Democracy.

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